Part 57 (2/2)

2.

echo teAm My name is Captain Joseph Ledger. Former Baltimore PD, former Army Ranger. Currently drawing pay from one of those alphabet organizations that the public never hears about.

Ever. The DMS. Short for Department of Military Sciences. Only we're not military. Not in any way I could explain.

We're certainly not regular army.

Guys like me aren't regular anything.

We're not even regular Special Forces.You won't find a single mention of a DMS field team on any list of JSOC crews, not even on those eyes-only black-ops lists. We operate off the radar because there are times someone has to. Plausible deniability will only take you so far and the president has to either lie or tell truths that-believe me-n.o.body wants to hear.

You know that saying, about how the truth will set you free.

It's true most of the time.

It's not that we're out there being bad guys. Nothing like that.

It's just that there are some things that will never fit into a newsfeed. Some things would make very bad TV. Disturbing TV. The kind that wouldn't just shake Joe Public's faith in the political powers that be but that would put serious cracks in his fundamental view of the world.

You can't sum up an after-action report with ”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” and n.o.body can stand behind this stuff in a press conference.

I know it's f.u.c.ked, but it is what it is.

Some of this stuff has really screwed with my head. I'm not the same guy I was when I was recruited by the DMS.

How could I be?

How could anyone?

We were in a Black Hawk cruising low and fast through a series of rocky pa.s.ses that looked like the ruins of some ancient castle. Afghanistan is like that in areas. It's a bleak, broken, and desolate place. I know of at least two video games that used scans of the landscape as the design basis for inhospitable alien worlds. Personally, I think the surface of Mars would be cheerier and more welcoming.

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